NAWJ PAST PRESIDENT FERNANDE DUFFLY RESPONDS TO LACK OF DATA FROM FIRMS ON PROMOTION

In an initiative ignited by NAWJ Past President Fernande Duffly in 2008 on behalf of NAWJ, and joined by several national organizations dedicated to promoting women and minorities in the law, including the National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL), Center for Women in Law at the University of Texas, and various bar associations, efforts were made to request law firms to report breakdowns of equity versus non-equity partners. This year, NALP tried, and failed, to get those breakdowns, hoping to include the information in its annual Directory of Legal Employers. As written in an online post, What Women Want: Partnership Details, posted by Vivia Chen: "The majority of our members refused to provide the breakdown," says NALP executive director James Leipold. "Many [firms] said they would not fill [out] the NALP form if we required it." NALP dropped the effort on February 12.

Responding to word of the setback, Justice Duffly, who sits on the Massachusetts Appeals Court, noted the importance for women and minority lawyers to greater transparency in the number of equity and nonequity partners at law firms. "It's the difference between having real power and the semblance of power," says Fernande Duffly. Justice Duffly has long advocated achieving greater diversity in the profession, has pushed NALP to collect the information for the last two years. "If you're making a career selection, you want a place where you have opportunity for real leadership; I think law students want to be full partners," Duffly says in explaining why the breakdown is important. She adds that she has a personal stake in the issue: "Law firm partners are part of the pipeline for our judiciary."

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